This invention relates to a rolling bearing for lengthwise movement between a sliding element and a rail element, comprised of at least one cage arranged between the slide element and the rail element, and at least one endless row of rolling bodies in the cage. In such arrangements, the loaded rolling bearings have each a row of rolling bodies which roll between longitudinal races of the slide element and the rail element, and the cage has longitudinal guide tracks for loaded rolling elements and unloaded rolling elements, and a pair of turn-around guide tracks are arranged to interconnect adjacent pairs of longitudinally extending races.
A rolling bearing of the above type is known, in which longitudinally directed elastic-yielding walls forming guide tracks are provided in the cage, in order to enable snapping of the rolling bodies in the races of the respective rows of rolling bodies, and to prevent the rolling bodies from falling out of the cage (DE-GM No. 1,896,804). This known arrangement has the disadvantage that the cage must be fabricated from a relatively yielding material, which is not always desirable for a cage. In addition, in the above described rolling bearing the rolling bodies roll with play between the walls of the races, so that the rolling bodies can move from side to side in the races and become jammed therein. As a result, in the above arrangements wherein the rolling bodies roll one after the other in a row, noisy intermittent running of the rolling bodies occurs and the rolling bodies abut one another.
The present invention is therefore directed to the provision of a rolling bearing for lengthwise movement that overcomes the above disadvantages of the known arrangements.